BOARD DIS­PUTES

As a deputy who at­tended the Board meet­ing ad­dressed by Mick Davis — and speak­ing only per­son­ally and not on be­half of the Board — I must con­fess my­self dis­mayed by the letter from Vi­vian Wine­man ( JC, Au­gust 5).

Is Mr Davis re­ally one of only a “small group of peo­ple” who care about ef­fec­tive de­liv­ery of ser­vices? I would sug­gest that there are many such peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions try­ing, and in­deed suc­ceed­ing against great odds, fi­nan­cial and po­lit­i­cal, to achieve that end.

I would also take is­sue with Mr Wine­man’s as­ser­tion that the Jewish Lead­er­ship Coun­cil’s ef­forts have never in­ter­fered with the Board’s core rep­re­sen­ta­tive man­date.

To my mind, ev­ery time they join the Board in an in­ter­view with a gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive, they are do­ing just that.

It is too much to ex­pect of HMG Min­is­ters that, when faced with dif­fer­ent peo­ple, they should un­der­stand that some at the meet­ing rep­re­sent an elected body with clear poli­cies on the sub­jects they are dis­cussing, while oth­ers rep­re­sent no­body but them­selves, ex­cept in their in­volve­ment with other Jewish or­gan­i­sa­tions.

In­deed, it proved im­pos­si­ble for them even to con­vince Mr Cameron to change his mind about con­tin­u­ing to be one of the pa­trons of a ma­jor fundrais­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion for Is­rael, surely one of Mr Davis’s own ar­eas of ex­per­tise.

I con­fess to be­ing one of those deputies who raised the “ab­surd” ques­tion as to where the power lies and won­der why Mr Wine­man feels it ap­pro­pri­ate to ex­press him­self to me, and the great num­ber of deputies who agreed with me at the meet­ing, in such pa­tro­n­is­ing terms. Irene Mans­field mail@mob­mans­field.co.uk